Everything about Pedro Albizu Campos totally explained
Pedro Albizu Campos (June 29, 1893 or September 12, 1891 – April 21, 1965) was a
Puerto Rican politician and advocate of
Puerto Rican independence from the
United States, and leader and president of the
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party from
1930 until his death. Because of his oratorical skills he was known as
El Maestro ("The Teacher").
Biography
Early Years
Albizu Campos was born in Tenerías Village in
Ponce, Puerto Rico to Alejandro Albizu and Juana Campos. He was the nephew of
danza composer Juan Morel Campos and cousin of Puerto Rican educator Dr.
Carlos Albizu Miranda.
Education
In
1912, Albizu was awarded a scholarship to study
Engineering, specializing in
Chemistry at the
University of Vermont. In 1913 he continued his studies at
Harvard University.
At the outbreak of
World War I, he volunteered in the United States
Infantry. Albizu was trained by the
French Military mission and served under General
Frank McIntyre where he was assigned to an
African-American unit and was discharged as a
First Lieutenant. During this time he was exposed to the
racism of the day which left a mark in his beliefs towards the relationship of Puerto Ricans and the United States.
In
1919, Albizu returned to
Harvard University and was elected president of Harvard's Cosmopolitan Club. He met with foreign students and lecturers, like
Subhas Chandra Bose (Indian Nationalist leader with
Mahatma Gandhi) and the Hindu poet
Rabindranath Tagore. He became interested in the cause of
Indian independence and also helped to establish several centers in
Boston for
Irish independence.
Albizu met
Éamon de Valera and later became a consultant in the drafting of the constitution of the
Irish Free State. He graduated from Harvard University obtaining a Law degree while studying Literature, Philosophy, Chemical Engineering and Military Science. He was fluent in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Latin and Greek. At the time he received job offers as Hispanic representative for a Protestant church and in the
U.S. State Department's diplomatic corps in
Mexico, yet Albizu opted to return to Puerto Rico.
Nationalist campaign
In
1922, Albizu married Dr.
Laura Meneses, a
Peruvian whom he'd met at Harvard University. Two years later in
1924 he joined the
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and was elected vice president. In
1927, Albizu traveled to
Santo Domingo,
Haiti,
Cuba,
Mexico,
Panama, Peru, and
Venezuela, seeking solidarity for the
Puerto Rican Independence movement.
In
1930, there were some disagreements between Albizu and
José Coll y Cuchí, president of the Party, as to how it should be run. As a result Coll y Cuchí abandoned the party and some of his followers returned to the Union Party. On
May 11,
1930, Albizu Campos was elected president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and formed the first Women's Nationalist Committee, in the island municipality of
Vieques, Puerto Rico.
In
1932, Albizu published a manuscript in which he accused Doctor
Cornelius P. Rhoades of killing Puerto Rican patients as part of medical experiments conducted in
San Juan's Presbyterian Hospital for the
Rockefeller Institute. Albizu quotes as his source a letter, received from a third party, in which the doctor purportedly admitted to injecting patients with live cancer cells. The letter also included inflammatory racist comments denigrating Puerto Ricans for their bad character. Subsequent investigations revealed no evidence of malicious activity to support the claim and Dr. Rhoades was vindicated while Albizu was discredited. Dr. Rhoades went on to head of two large chemical warfare projects in the 1940s and later served with the
United States Atomic Energy Commission. He was later awarded the U.S.
Legion of Merit.
The Nationalist Party obtained poor results in the 1932 election, but continued with their campaign to teach and unite the people behind a free Puerto Rico. At the same time, continued repression from the United States against Puerto Rican independence was now met with armed resistance.
In
1933, Albizu led a
strike against the
Puerto Rico Railway and
Light and Power Company for alleged
monopoly on the island. The following year, he represented
sugar cane workers as a lawyer against the U.S. sugar industry.
First Arrest
In
1935, four Nationalists were killed by the police under the command of Colonel
E. Francis Riggs. The incident became known as the
Río Piedras massacre. The following year in 1936, nationalists
Hiram Rosado and
Elias Beauchamp assassinated Colonel Riggs. They were arrested, and summarily executed without a trial at the police headquarters in San Juan.
After these events, the San Juan Federal Court ordered the arrest of Albizu Campos and several other Nationalists for "seditious
conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. Government in Puerto Rico." A jury of seven Puerto Ricans and five Americans voted 7 to 5 not guilty. However, Judge Cooper called for a new jury, this time composed of ten Americans and two Puerto Ricans and a guilty verdict was achieved.
In
1937, a group of lawyers, including a young
Gilberto Concepción de Gracia tried in vain to defend the Nationalists, but the
Boston Court of Appeals, which holds jurisdiction over federal matters in Puerto Rico, upheld the verdict. Albizu Campos and the other Nationalist leaders were sent to the Federal penitentiary in
Atlanta,
Georgia.
In
1943, Albizu got seriously
ill and had to be interned at the
Columbus Hospital of
New York. He stayed there almost until the end of his sentence. After ten years of imprisonment, in
1947 Albizu returned to Puerto Rico and it was believed that he began preparing, along with other members of the Nationalist Party, an armed struggle against the proposed plans to change Puerto Rico's political status into a
commonwealth of the United States.
Second Arrest
Pedro Albizu Campos would be jailed again after two events: 1) the revolt of
1950 when a group of Puerto Rican
nationalists staged a revolt in the town of
Jayuya (known as the
Jayuya Uprising) and 2) an attack on
La Fortaleza (the Puerto Rican governor's mansion) and
Blair House, by nationalist
Oscar Collazo and
Griselio Torresola, where president
Harry S. Truman was staying while the
White House was being renovated.
During
the attack on the president, Torresola and policeman,
Private Leslie Coffelt, were killed. Albizu Campos was arrested at his home after a brief shoot out with the police. Subsequently 3,000 independence supporters were arrested. In
1951 Pedro Albizu Campos was jailed again and sentenced to 80 years in prison.
Albizu was pardoned in
1953 by then governor
Luis Muñoz Marín but the pardon was revoked the following year after the
1954 nationalist attack of the United States House of Representatives, when four Puerto Rican Nationalists, led by
Lolita Lebrón opened fire from the gallery of the Capitol Building in
Washington D.C..
Later years and death
While in prison, Albizu Campos' health deteriorated. In
1956, he suffered a
stroke in prison and was transferred to San Juan's Presbyterian Hospital under police guard. He alleged that he was the subject of human
radiation experiments in prison. Officials suggested that Albizu was insane although many doctors were able to examine Albizu and test for signs of radiation. The President of the Cuban Cancer Association, Dr. Orlando Damuy, traveled to PR to examine him. The burns on his body were reported by Dr. Damuy, where he diagnosed that they were the cause of intense radiation. It is said when they placed a metal paper clip with a film on Albizu's skin, the clip was radiated into the film. It is also said he didn't receive any medical attention for 5 days and instead suffered.
Albizu's radiated body while in prison was pardoned in 1953 by Luis Muñoz Marin, governor of Puerto Rico, but the pardon was revoked due another attempt against the U.S. House of Representatives in 1954. On November 15, 1964 Albizu was agained pardoned by Muñoz Marin. He finally died on
April 21,
1965.
In
1994, under the administration of President
Bill Clinton, the
United States Department of Energy disclosed that human radiation "experiments" were conducted without consent on prisoners during the
1950s and
1970s. Pedro Albizu Campos was among the subjects of such experimentation.
Relationship with Prominent Latin American Figures
Pedro Albizu Campos had very good relationships with many prominent figures of
Latin American politics.
Nobel Prize laureate and admirer of Albizu Campos,
Gabriela Mistral, presented a
tamarind tree to Albizu Campos as a symbol of her support for the
Puerto Rican Independence Movement. She obtained the
tamarind tree from the world-known
Venezuelan leader
Simón Bolivar's estate in
Venezuela. The tree was planted at the
Lares, Puerto Rico Plaza de la Revolución with soil taken from the eighteen other Spanish-speaking
Latin American countries of the Hemisphere.
As inspired by Gabriela Mistral, Albizu Campos meant to give the Plaza a living symbol of solidarity with the struggle for freedom and independence initiated by Bolivar (who, while visiting
Vieques, Puerto Rico, promised to assist the
Puerto Rico independence movement, albeit said promise never materialized due to the power struggles surrounding him), as well as a symbol of the bittersweet (as the trees' flavor) hardships needed to reach
Puerto Rico's independence. As such, the
Tamarindo de Gabriela was meant to evoke the symbolism and significance afforded to the
Gernikako Arbola hailing from the
Basque Country, found between
Spain and
France.
Legacy
The extent of Albizu's legacy is generally the subject of passionate discussion by both followers and detractors. His followers state that Albizu's political and military actions served (even unintentionally) as a primer for positive change in Puerto Rico, these being:
- the improvement of labor conditions for peasants and workers
- a belated yet more accurate assessment of the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States by the political establishment in Washington
- and a set of social and political conditions that led to positive change in the political - and eventually economic - environment prevailing in the country.
Detractors denounce Albizu as a radical
fascist, whose actions only brought turmoil to Puerto Rico. Some claim that the weak following of the
Puerto Rican independence movement in the present day can be traced, if not to Albizu, to the repression that his actions brought upon the movement.
Albizu can be definitely credited, however, with preserving and promoting Puerto Rican
nationalism and national symbols, at a time where they were virtually a
taboo in the country. The formal adoption of the Puerto Rican flag as a national emblem by the Puerto Rican government can be traced to Albizu (even while he denounced this adoption as the "watering-down" of an otherwise sacred symbol into a "colonial flag"); the revival of public observance of the
Grito de Lares and its significant icons was a direct mandate from him as leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.
Albizu was the most vocal and visible Puerto Rican of African descent of his generation; Afro-Puerto Rican leaders of other political extractions (such as
Ernesto Ramos Antonini and
Jose Celso Barbosa) attained similar status only after facing (and enduring) considerable bouts with
racism. Albizu, while not exempt from it, confronted it and denounced it publicly.
Albizu's diagnosis of the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States earned him prison time, yet modern scholars take surprise at how accurate the diagnosis is, even years after Albizu's death. Finally, his political philosophy persists to this day, synthesized in quotes and verbal images.
An alternative high school in
Chicago, called the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School, is located in the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. There, students learn about
Puerto Rican history and culture, in the context of local community development. Archives there include original letters, representations of Albizu Campos in sculpture and art, as well as other material related to his life.
Additionally, five public schools in Puerto Rico are named after him, as well as numerous streets in most of Puerto Rico's municipalities. In
1976, Public School 161 in
Harlem in
New York City was named after him as well.
Further Information
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